Business: Influence Peddling Turns Respectable

DURING the congressional debate over Federal regulation of natural-gas
producers (see NATIONAL AFFAIRS), Michigan's Republican Senator Charles
Potter, who favors regulation, tore into the gas lobby for trying "to
put pressure on me." But Senator Potter also had a powerful lobby
working for his side: representatives of scores of Eastern utilities
and big unions, plus a small-producers'-and-consumers' committee headed
by Indianapolis' former Mayor Alex M. Clark.

Natural gas is but one of many targets this year for Washington's corps
of 1,000 professional lobbyists, most of whom represent business
organizations. Whether lobbying helps...